


Bathing Habits

by Mossgreen



Series: 2770 ab urbe condita [10]
Category: 2770 ab urbe condita - Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ancient Rome, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bathing/Washing, Blow Jobs, Exhibitionism, M/M, Master/Slave, Objectification, Sexual Slavery, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 03:24:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15452295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mossgreen/pseuds/Mossgreen
Summary: Master is stressed and needs to relax. It's a good thing he has his own bath-house - and Ven, of course.





	Bathing Habits

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to presume that modern-day Romans would bathe in the same way their ancestors did 2000 years ago; after all, similar baths still exist in modern-day Turkey, which used to be the centre of the Byzantine empire, which was a direct descendant of the Roman empire when it split in two in the third century CE.
> 
> Translations and links to pictures may be found at the end.

“Attend me in the bath-house.” The order was brief, even curt, and Ven turned to see his master disappear so fast he could have sworn an after-image hung in the empty doorway. Master's footsteps were dying away down the colonnade as Ven gathered his scattered senses and hurried after him. From the tone of his voice, Ven would end up writhing under the lash later if he was any slower getting to the bath-house than Master himself.

Master was rich; his chain of stores brought in untold wealth (they sold all sorts of implements useful to slave-owners, even if they didn't choose to buy actual sex toys, after all), and his house was a large one, with its own bath-house that included a plunge-bath large enough to swim in. There was no need at all for him to spend even the single bronze _as_ that the public baths charged as an entry fee.

Master was already there in the changing room, stripping off his tunic when Ven arrived; the toga already lay in a heap on the marble floor and Master's tunic was not long in joining it. Ven wasted no time in finding a towel to offer his master before bending to pick the garments up to fold them and place them in one of the cubbyholes. He found his master a pair of thick cork-soled bath-house slippers – the floor in the _caldarium_ was too hot to walk on barefoot – and then undressed himself. He had been allowed to be clothed more and more often lately, but there were still places where he could not be – and the bath-house was a place where even the master and any house-guests would be unclothed without shame.

He found a second pair of slippers for himself, and equipped himself with a strigil and oil-bottle and two towels, slipping into the _caldarium_ ahead of his master to spread one of the towels over a bench for him to lie on. He tied the smaller towel around his waist; it was not so much to hide his nakedness as to give him a place to wipe the strigil and his hands as he tended his master.

If the rule about not standing in his master's presence was suspended in the bath-house (slaves were permitted inside to tend Master or Master's guests, which generally meant they required the use of their hands – and if the _caldarium_ floor was too hot to walk on barefoot, it was certainly too hot to crawl on), the rule about not speaking out of turn was not, and so Ven could not enquire of his master what had put him in such a bad mood. He was merely thankful that Master had decided to order him to the bath-house and not to the playroom, to be strung up and whipped as catharsis for his master. It had happened, once before, and although his arse and thighs had hurt for a while afterwards – sitting had been uncomfortable for the best part of a week – Ven wasn't sure how effective it had been overall for his master.

Not as effective as easing Master's tight muscles, apparently. 

“You were a really good investment,” Master informed him, groaning a little as Ven kneaded a tight knot out of his shoulder. 

“I am pleased that you think so, Master,” Ven replied neutrally, wondering how it was a good thing if he had gone up in value and was supposed to still be able to buy himself free at some undefined point in the future. It was not a total impossibility that Master might manumit him, he supposed, though surely that would not be for years, till Master got bored with him. Saving up his _pecūlium_ would be a surer route – if he could be certain of getting any _pecūlium_ now other than the fraction of his purchase price which, by law, went into a fund reserved for saving a slave's freedom cost.

It was a while before either of them spoke again, the splashing of the fountain the only sound as water rained into the hot pool at one end of the room. Ven startled himself with his own temerity when he, rather than his master, was the one to break the silence. The heat in here must be getting to him! Quietly, aware that speaking without being addressed was bound to draw down punishment on his head (especially with the master's temper currently running so high), he said, “Master, may I be permitted to ask what happened?”

“Do I really need to keep you gagged, to remind you when you may speak?” Master sounded, thankfully, more amused and indulgent than angry at Ven's presumption. “I fired my secretary. He had been selling information to one of our competitors. I have more than half a mind to seek recompense in the courts.”

Ven tried to calculate what that might mean for the erstwhile secretary – ten years' servitude, perhaps, depending on the financial loss to his master. Ten years was still less than half the time Ven himself had been a slave, though, so he could not find it in himself to be entirely sorry for the man. It was his family he felt most sorry for, if he had any.

“I'm sorry, Master,” he said, uncertain himself whether he was apologising for his speaking out of turn, or whether he were offering commiseration at what had happened. Either way, he was not going to risk speaking out of turn again – it was not his place to suggest anything, anyway. He pressed his thumbs into a knot beside his master's spine, waiting for the hiss of breath as it released. 

“You can read and write, can't you?” Master said a moment later, startling Ven with the suddenness of the question.

“Yes, Master,” he replied, carefully kneading his master's back and deliberately not wondering what this questioning might be leading to as he worked out another knot with his knuckles.

“Can you use a computer?”

“I have done, Master, once or twice only. I can learn, if that is what my master wishes for me.” He'd be a quick learner, too, slaves had to be, in order to make the best of their situation.

“Hmm.”

There was another pause, again broken by the master. “Have you ever used a tablet computer?”

“No, Master.”

“Hmm.” 

Ven wasn't entirely certain he liked it when his master started thinking about things, but then his usual experience of when Master had started thinking about him had led to some not entirely pain-free situations for Ven himself, so that was understandable. He knew how to humiliate Ven, too, which might even be more discomfiting, in a way.

How long did it take before you stopped being humiliated by something, anyway?

He had never known his master to be so tense and did not know how long he had been massaging his master's back and shoulders by the time the knots were all worked out and he was allowed to move on to oiling him and scraping off the oil and dirt with the strigil – careful not to scrape his master too harshly with the implement. He had done that, once, and had not been able to lie on his back for a week, the resulting whipping had been so severe. It had not left any permanent marks on his body, thankfully; he had already been chosen to be Master's personal slave by then, or he had no doubt the whipping would have left physical scarring.

He had just about finished scraping his master clean when he rolled over to sit up, making Ven take a step back out of the way. Master reached to tug the towel from Ven's waist, leaving him as nude as he had been for the first few weeks as Master's personal slave.

“You may clean yourself off. Make it a show for me.”

That was far easier said than done; generally it took a second person to do one's back and Ven was not about to ask Master if he would mind lending a hand. He could do everything else, though, and have a shower later for the parts he couldn't reach now.

The oil was warm out of the bottle now; it had been sitting on the heated floor for long enough, and its warmth made it less viscous than it would otherwise have been, so oiling himself was easy enough.

There was something rather appealing about the shine of oiled skin, he thought. It wasn't something he was used to, from the perspective of the person inhabiting that skin; slaves generally showered to cleanse themselves and only rarely got to indulge in the pleasure of the bath-house. He hefted the strigil, slowly drawing it down his arm, removing the oil and dirt, leaving his skin pink and clean as he wiped the dirt from the strigil onto the towel, which he placed on a second bench to be handy. He worked his way over his shoulder to his chest, where he had to be careful of his piercings as he manoeuvred the strigil around his pecs before he reached his other shoulder and arm. 

It was a very different feeling to bathing in water, more luxurious and less gentle at the same time. The silky smoothness of the oil and slight rasp of the strigil were a very different aesthetic, overall. He turned to do his side and as much as he could reach of his back, turning to face his master again as he moved back across his stomach to the other side. It was much easier to do this on someone else, a someone else who was lying down, but it made it an interesting challenge and an interesting feeling to do it to himself. 

He could manage to do his bum himself, though the second buttock was harder than the first because he was twisting the wrong way and using his non-dominant hand to work the strigil.

He only became fully aware of his master watching him once he had straightened up from doing his legs to find him watching keenly, his towel discarded and legs apart with his cock standing proudly between them. His expression, when Ven dared glance at his face, looked as he would imagine a cat would look at the mouse it had caught and was planning to play with before eating.

Ven's own cock was hard, but he thought that had more to do with the harness than with the very deliberate teasing show he had just performed. He could hope it had, anyway.

“Fetch a clean towel and join me in the frigidarium,” Master said after another long few minutes spent ogling Ven.

“Yes, Master,” he replied, picking up the oil-bottle and the towel he had been wearing, and the one Master had discarded. The dirty towels in the laundry-basket, oil bottle and strigil returned to the shelf where they lived, he took a clean towel and went through to the _frigidarium_ , where Master was already waiting, sitting on the side of the plunge-bath with his feet in the water. 

It was on the tip of Ven's tongue to ask if he could do anything for his master's erection, which was still considerable, despite this room being the coldest room of the bath-house. But to do anything with Master's prick would mean Ven would have to be in the water, and he was not going to be so presumptuous as to think Master would allow that.

“Put the towel down and put your mouth to work, boy,” Master told him, leaning back on his elbows and looking up at the barrel-vaulted ceiling above them. “I'd have your arse, but I'm not having you spill my seed in the bath.”

“In the pool, Master?” Ven queried, placing the towel down on a nearby bench and approaching.

“In the pool. Leave the harness on.”

At this end of the pool was a seat, or wide step, which ran the full width of the pool, allowing bathers to sit in the water and lean back against the side of the bath. Rather than sitting in the water, Master was sitting on the edge with his feet on the step – a small mercy, which meant Ven was not expected to blow him under water.

Ven got into the water, quickly but without hurry; he had no wish to slip and crack his head or something equally painful. The water was cold, especially after his exertions in the caldarium, but he couldn't take the time to adjust before approaching his master, who had spread his knees. Ven knelt on the step and took his master's prick in his mouth, tasting a little oil, but mostly water and his master's own salty flavour.

Ven's own cock was still hard, which definitely was due to the harness; the water was cold and would normally have been enough to reduce his erection to half-mast if not to make it dissipate completely. The leather had shrunk a little with its immersion, probably not noticeably were it laid out and compared to an identical harness that was still dry, but it _felt_ smaller, which had to be a product of Ven's imagination.

“Come on, slave, work at it, before I just take you,” Master said, his impatience becoming apparent. Ven raised a hand to knead his master's balls, only to have it slapped away. “No, you may not use your hands.”

Ven clasped his hands behind his back, to reduce the temptation of putting them anywhere they might help him, and continued to work at Master's cock. It wouldn't be too long before he came, if Ven was any judge.

“You're improving at this,” Master said, shifting to lift one hand so that he could run it through Ven's hair.

Ven wasn't sure he wanted to improve at sucking cock, but then, if it made his life easier in any respect, well....

Just as he was thinking this, Master's hand tightened in his hair and his hips thrust twice, nearly catching Ven off-guard as his mouth filled with semen. He swallowed, coaxing more to dribble out, before licking his owner's cock clean and gently letting it slip from his mouth.

“You may duck under the water once, then get out and get a kneeler from the cupboard. Kneel up beside the pool, knees wide, your elbows tucked in and your forearms out parallel to the floor, hands flat.”

A dip in the plunge bath was the traditional way to end a bathing session, but Ven was a little surprised his master had allowed it, despite allowing Ven the opportunity to clean himself off earlier; he had fully expected to be dismissed to wait while his master completed his own bath. 

“Yes, Master,” he said, carefully slipping back away from his master, still facing him, until he was standing in the chest-deep pool, with the water just below his pecs. He lowered his eyes before taking a breath and bending his knees, slipping quietly below the water, allowing it to wash away the remainder of the dirt and oil from earlier, before straightening up again, his head still bent.

“You know how to give a good show, I'll grant you that,” Master informed him dryly even as water streamed down from Ven's hair, plastering it to his head.

“Thank you, Master.”

Master gave him an indulgent smile before snapping his fingers once, dismissing Ven to fulfil his earlier order.

The kneelers in the cupboard had been cut from a foam flotation board, and Ven grabbed one, making sure not to spill the rest, and returned to where his master was. Master had stood to get the towel, and Ven positioned himself as ordered, sweeping his wet hair out of his face before he knelt, grateful for the small mercy of not having to kneel on cold hard marble.

“A perfect shelf for my towel,” Master said, laying the folded towel across Ven's waiting arms before stepping down into the plunge-bath for a swim, leaving Ven to shiver a little as he dried off in the cold air.

**Author's Note:**

> Translations: _tepidarium_ , the warm room. Usually, bathers would sit here for a bit to allow their pores to begin to open before moving to the _caldarium_ : the hottest room of a Roman bath-house. The _frigidarium_ was the last and coldest room, usually with a large plunge bath of cold water. _Pecūlium_ : basically, pocket-money; the small earnings generally considered to be a slave's own money (even though technically a slave wasn't allowed to own anything, being a possession himself). A _strigil_ was a curved metal implement designed to remove oil, dirt and impurities from the skin.
> 
> The Romans didn't use soap, water and wash-cloth as we do. Their baths consisted of separate rooms at different ambient temperatures, ranging from warm to hot to cold, and worked more like a Turkish bath or sauna. They would basically sit and sweat the dirt and impurities out, and then a slave would oil them and use a specially-shaped tool called a strigil (pictured below) to scrape the oil and sweat off the skin, after which the bather would go into the _frigidarium_ , the cold room, which often had a large cold pool they could dip in, which was a refreshing bath that had the effect of closing the pores again. The aim wasn't to scrape the skin itself but to scrape the combination of oil, sweat and dirt off the skin
> 
> Strigil and oil-flask.
> 
> There is a plan of a bath-house [here](https://i2.wp.com/www.u3ahadrianswall.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/BATH-HSE-PLAN.jpg?resize=388%2C511), and an artist's illustration [here](http://www.bobmarshall.co.uk/portfolio/illustrations/reconstructions/historicscotland/bearsden/bearsden_lge.jpg) \- both of these are public bath-houses but give a good idea of what Master's might look like.


End file.
